Let’s be frank, we all live with lists! The vast majority of us LOVE it, while others disdain it. But we all get through life – a little easier – equipped with these lists, or a variation thereof. Published Best Of~ lists, in particular, probably fascinate us the most.

The Media makes perennial compilations – print, electronic and now… viral. Everyone from Celebrity Gossip magazines to TV Gossip Shows, Yahoo and YouTube… including glossy Travel Magazines, like Condé Nast Traveler and Travel & Leisure who each year anoint “what’s hot” and “what’s not”, in Hotels, Spas, Airlines, Restaurants, and Travel Destinations. Even National Geographic has their version of a hot hotel list, but focuses on what matters the most – whether or not they have a green heart. The result: 50 Top Ecolodges: The Most Earth-Friendly Retreats in the World’s Most Spectacular Wilds. Here’s a partial look at some of them, across the 5 different categories of: Island, Savanna, Jungle, Desert, and Mountain.

A decade ago, you could probably count only a handful of the world’s true eco-lodges. But today we are witnessing one of the most significant transformations in the history of modern travel. And ecolodges are at the center of this movement. Once located exclusively in the African bush and Central American jungles, these retreats now span nearly every ecosystem and every budget—and their mission has never been more vital. Sure, they offer great service and comfort in spectacular locations, but they also support local communities, connect their guests to cultures on an authentic level, create impactful conservation initiatives, and increasingly place adventure at the center of the experience. Here we present the most comprehensive ecolodge survey ever assembled, representing diverse landscapes and locales. Click on the dots below to find your green adventure.

Daintree Eco Lodge & Spa, Australia
Key Features: luxury, active adventures, local culture

Run in partnership with the local Kuku Yalanji tribe, Daintree is one of the few places where outsiders can interact with Australian Aborigines in their element. Guides offer painting workshops using ocher from the lodge’s waterfall and hiking tours (a must for fans of Bruce Chatwin’s The Songlines) to see medicinal plants and ferns with 25-foot fronds. Guests stay in a series of 15 elevated tree house-like villas ensconced in thick, misty rain forest, located a mere 40-minute drive e from the Great Barrier Reef.

Chumbe Island Coral Park, Tanzania
Key Features: active adventures, wildlife, local culture, family

Welcome, Sierra Club members! Chumbe’s seven bungalows, outfitted with solar-heated showers, are fit for Robinson Crusoe. The lodge was founded in conjunction with Zanzibar’s first marine park and now trains local rangers. Spot the rare nine-pound coconut crab, the largest on land, then snorkel with dol s and hawksbill turtles.

Sukau Rainforest Lodge, Borneo
Key Features: active adventures, wildlife, family

Embrace Borneo’s clamorous jungle life at the 20-room Sukau Rainforest Lodge, a 45-minute flight from Kota Kinabalu, followed by a two-hour boat trip. The lodge offers tours in handcrafted wooden boats with ultraquiet electric motors and has a series of boardwalks with passageways for migrating elephants.

Voyages Longitude 131°, Australia
Key Features: luxury, local culture

It pays to wake up at dawn at Voyages Longitude 131°. A bedside button draws the shades of your safari-style tent to reveal an unfettered view of the sun rising over Ayers Rock, the outback’s famed monolith. By day, Aborigines lead tours around Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. In the evenings, dine out in the open, quaff local wines, and listen to stargazing tutorials.

North Island, Seychelles
Key Features: luxury, active adventures, wildlife

While taking in uninterrupted views of the turquoise sea from a villa handcrafted by local Seychellois carpenters, it’s easy to mistake this as one’s own private island. It’s even harder to believe that the isle was once ravaged by invasive species. African outfitter Wilderness Safaris rehabbed the land by reintroducing endemic tortoises, birds, and plants and building 11 no-expense-spared villas, a spa, and a dive center.

Kosrae Village Ecolodge & Dive Resort, Micronesia
Key Features: active adventures, local culture, family

Located east of Palau, the jumble of steep jade mountains known as Kosrae Island is farther than most tourists venture. That’s why Kosrae Village, the island’s one and only ecolodge, feels like such an authentic slice of South Pacific life. Dive for a coral-monitoring project, learn to weave at a local village, and dine on coconut-smoked wahoo.

Al Maha Desert Resort & Spa, United Arab Emirates
Key Features: luxury, active adventures, wildlife

Though set in Arabian Desert dunes only 45 minutes from Dubai, Al Maha feels impossibly remote. Credit goes to the resort, which helped establish a 55,600-acre reserve, the country’s first. Guests can camel trek, ride purebred Arabian horses, and watch falconry displays, then bed down in decadent Bedouin-style suites with Persian rugs, antiques, and private pools.

Lapa Rios Ecolodge, Costa Rica
Key Features: luxury, active adventures, wildlife, local culture, family

Set in a thousand-acre private tropical rain forest reserve on the Osa Peninsula, Lapa Rios was Costa Rica’s first ecolodge to combine creature conservation with creature comforts. Hardly a weed was harmed in the building of the 16 thatch bungalows outfitted with locally made bamboo furniture, solar-heated showers, and hammocks overlooking the Pacific.

Wadi Feynan Ecolodge, Jordan
Key Features: active adventures, wildlife, local culture

Jordan’s Dana Biosphere Reserve covers 116 square miles, protecting rare wildlife like the sand cat and Syrian wolf. In 2005, to raise funds for the reserve and employ local Bedouins, Jordan’s Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature established this 26-room, solar-powered retreat with a mountain bike trail system. The inn, a model for Jordanian ecolodges, offers unprecedented access to Bedouin life.

Uno Eco Lodge, Mexico
Key Features: active adventures, wildlife, local culture, family

Uno Eco Lodge is perched above the Urique River on the rim of Copper Canyon—deeper than the Grand and a lot less crowded. The nine solar-powered rooms are owned by the Raramuri Indians, and your stay supports their 65,000-acre wilderness, where pumas and bobcats prowl. Trek to caves, waterfalls, and archaeological sites or skirt the canyon in a 1950s-era open-deck railcar.

Black Sheep Inn, Ecuador
Key Features: active adventures, local culture

The Black Sheep Inn, perched at 10,500 feet in the Ecuadorian highlands south of Quito, has transparent roofs to let sunlight into the indoor flower gardens, with views of the Rio Toachi Canyon. Everything else at this simple eight-room eco-retreat and bunkhouse follows in irrepressible green style. After hiking through remote Andean villages and canyons, feast on a vegetarian dinner from the organic garden, sit in the sauna, then cap it all off with a glass of Ecuadorian rum.

Wolwedans, Namibia
Key Features: active adventures, wildlife

Like many private African reserves, Wolwedans started when a Namibian businessman bought up desert farms to return them to nature. But Wolwedans, which offers four camps to suit all tastes, is anything but typical. Play Hemingway in a canvas-and-gum-pole tent or in an elegant wood-and-canvas chalet—both staffed by trained villagers—and hike through the vast quiet of the golden sand dunes, punctuated by oryx and springbok. Our advice: Splurge on hot-air ballooning at dawn.

Rosalie Forest Eco Lodge, Dominica
Key Features: active adventures, family

Instead of white sand and palms, the Caribbean isle of Dominica is covered in volcanoes and virgin jungle. A15-minute hike into the vines and heliconia, Rosalie’s tree houses and cabins feature wind-powered lights and rainwater showers. After waterfall hikes, eat an organic dinner with Brit owner Jem Winston, a London taxi driver turned sustainable-living guru.

Vumbura Plains Camp, Botswana
Key Features: luxury, wildlife

Located outside the trekkers’ capital of Pokhara, 125 miles from Kathmandu, Tiger Mountain The Okavango, encompassing thousands of square miles of floodplains, is a paradise for avian species and megafauna. Vumbura, set on the delta’s northern edge, has minimalist-chic suites with private lounges and plunge pools overlooking the plains. The lodge also offers the best way to sneak up on those wattled cranes and rare Pel’s fishing owls: the mokoro, a traditional dug-out canoe.

The Lodge at Pico Bonito, Honduras
Key Features: local adventures, wildlife, family

Travelers in little-visited Honduras often feel a unique sense of discovery. This is especially true at Pico Bonito’s secluded cabins, built with hurricane-downed timber in a remote stretch of rain forest near the eponymous national park and the Bay Islands. Horseback ride and whitewater raft one day, snorkel and visit Maya ruins the next.

Desert Rhino Camp, Namibia
Key Features: luxury, active adventures, wildlife

Thanks to the joint efforts of outfitter Wilderness Safaris and Save the Rhino Trust, Namibia’s million-acre private Palmwag Conservancy hosts the largest free-ranging population of black rhinos in Africa. Track the beasts on foot with SRT rangers and researchers across rolling hills and desert scattered with ancient welwitschia plants, then sip South African Merlot and retire to an elegant canvas-and-thatch tent overlooking red-rock badlands.

Tswalu Kalahari Reserve, South Africa
Key Features: luxury, wildlife

In just four years, entrepreneur Stephen Boler bought 34 farms in the Kalahari Desert and turned them into a 220,000-acre wilderness reserve, one of the largest private conservation projects in African history. Walk and horseback ride to view resuscitated populations of rare wild dogs, roan antelope, lions, and rhinos. Luxury cottages have private pools and sundecks overlooking watering holes.

Tiamo Resort, Bahamas
Key Features: luxury, active adventures, family

While hoteliers have jostled for elbow room on Caribbean beaches since the 1950s, remote South Andros Island has remained blissfully development free. To preserve the pristine area, Tiamo?s owners hid their 11 airy wooden bungalows in the jungle and built a field of solar panels to power them. Cast for bonefish in world-renowned flats or snorkel one of the planet?s largest reefs.

Nihiwatu, Indonesia
Key Features: luxury, active adventures, local culture

Nihiwatu has a consistent break right off its 1.5-mile beach, but this chilled-out surf nirvana attracts more than pro riders. Join the active devotees of this coconut-biodiesel-fueled resort for yoga in the thatch pavilion, find bliss in the spa, and mountain bike to remote villages. Thanks in part to the resort, thousands of villagers now have access to clean water and health clinics.

Soneva Fushi by Six Senses, Maldives
Key Features: luxury, active adventures

“No news, no shoes,” is the resident philosophy at Soneva Fushi, which is to say: Kick back. Dive or windsurf the baby blue waters, take a wine-tasting tutorial with the sommelier, or dine on your own private beach. Behind its elegant facade, this 65-suite resort has committed to zero carbon emissions by 2010 with innovations like deep-ocean water cooling.

This southern Australian park offers outstanding views of the rugged coastline and peaceful inlets and rivers. The Valley of the Giants Tree Top Walk is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the area for all ages. Visitors walk along a walkway 38 meters above the tingle forest and observe the natural habitat below. (images via: flickr, rainbowcoast)

Source: Web Ecoist

Illawarra Fly Treetop Walk is a 500 metre long, 25 metre high elevated tree top walk in Australia. The walk takes visitors on a tour of temperate rainforest of the Southern Highlands, where breathtaking views of Illawarra escarpment.(images via: flickr, tourismshellharbour )

Source: Web Ecoist

Mamu Rainforest Canopy Walkway is another Australian treetop walk, which features elevated walkways, a cantilever and observation tower for guests. From the walkway, visitors enjoy a panoramic view of World Heritage rainforest landscapes. (images via: flickr, totaltravel)

Source: Web Ecoist

The Otway Fly treetop walk in Australia takes guest 25 meters above the forest floor on a steel-trussed walkway for a 600 meter bird’s eye view of unspoiled nature. It is the longest and highest walk of its kind in the world. (images via: flickr, team-endeavor, redbubble)

Source: Web Ecoist

The Tahune Forest Airwalk in Tasmania takes you above one of the most world-renowned forests, the Tahune Forest Reserve. This forest is the home of Eucalyptus Regnans, the world’s tallest flowering plant. The Airwalk takes you on a 597 meter walk along the treetops of the eucalyptus forest.

Source: Web Ecoist

O’Reilly’s Guest House is approximately a 40 minute drive from the Gold Coast in Australia. From the guest house, visitors follow the trail to the suspended bridge for a treetop walk. This treetop walk is unique and possibly one of the most frightening, as the bridge is constructed of wood and rope and bounces when walked on. The treetop walks leads guests to the botanical gardens at the park.
(images via: fudomouth, blogspot, ezau, Wendy Turner)

Source: Web Ecoist

The hotel is decorated in a natural and cozy mountain style with local wood and stone. Windows, walls, doors and stairs are all carved out of the local rustic woods. Large windows of the hotel add warm tones to the wood. Each nine room is named for a different local species of bird and all of them have private well-equipped bathrooms.

The major attraction here is hot Tubs in the Forest, made of huge trunks of trees. They are filled with hot water and are set on a platform overlooking the forest. This is really a place to take a very good glass wine and relax.

The hotel facilities include: a restaurant with local specialties, bar, sauna, mini-golf court and internet access. Mountain Area’s Activities: hiking, trekking, horseback riding, rafting and mountain biking.

Source: Wayfaring

The eco-friendly La Cocotera offers:

• Solar energy
• Energy saving light bulbs/ kinesthetic power flashlights
• Biological (not chemical) waste water recycling treatment plant
• Environmentally safe products, shampoos and soaps
• All cleaning products are environmentally safe
• Recycling of plastics, paper and glass
• Ionization pool filtration

Lapa Rios ~ Playa Carbonera, Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica

In 1990 two former peace corps volunteers, John and Karen Lewis, decided to abandon their suburban professional lives in the United States, liquidate all personal assets, and use the proceeds to finance the creation of a reserve with over 1,000 acres of mostly rainforest, with enormous biodiversity value, in a remote area of Costa Rica. The end result: Lapa Rios Eco Lodge.

To support the maintenance of this private reserve and provide sustainable economic activity to the local community, they went on to build a small upscale wilderness lodging operation called Lapa Rios in 1993 that today is one of the most renowned and successful ecotourism operations in the world.
The couple´s story has had enormous appeal to visitors of Lapa Rios, who realize that “ordinary” people (John was a lawyer and Karen taught music) can make an extraordinary difference in the conservation of wilderness and in the lives of people who live in and around such wilderness.

Activities at Lapa Rios are focused around the rainforest and the nearby Ocean. Rainforest hikes, bird watching, ocean kayaking, horseback riding, catch and release sport fishing and surfing are some of the activities offered. Furthermore, guests can take massages, participate in Yoga classes, relax at the pool with a tropical cocktail or just take a nap in a hammock and maybe observe the birds, monkeys and other animals that come by.

All 16 bungalows are private and open to the sea; they are spacious and can sleep up to 4 people in 2 queen size beds. Each has an indoor (solar-heated) shower and a private garden shower, 2 sinks, large closets, and a deck overlooking the rainforest and the ocean. All bungalow access requires stair and path walking. There is 24-hour electricity available for battery charging.

Fresh rain forest breezes race in through awesome screened wall windows, forming flawless paintings of the Pacific Ocean.